


Blood and Boiled Roses

by allthingsunrelated



Category: Gangsta. (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coming to Terms with Death, Developing Relationship, Drabble, Drug Use, Graphic Description, Hurt/not so much comfort, Introspection, Kissing with little romantic meaning, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Overall kinda depressing, Solo Setting, Squick, Very little dialogue, Worick-centric, abusee mentality, nonsensical language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 15:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4612380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthingsunrelated/pseuds/allthingsunrelated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Worick only fears recollection. </p><p>What he would give to return to oblivion, to have a spike drove hard into his medial temporal and sit by the window like a potted plant.<br/>At some point in his wretched life, Worick fucked up. He spoke when his mouth should've been sewn shut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood and Boiled Roses

**Author's Note:**

> This is sooo loosely based in canon, its like, an AU about a glimmer of a flashback?? When Worick and Nicolas worked with/ were mentored by Monroe? I'm guessing they where around 18-24, but I don't really know. I don't know a damn thing and here I am.

 

 

Its been more than a few months since Worick has been drenched like this. Mid-winter showers instead of snow, unremarkable and numbingly cold. Icy thorns that lead you by the hand and deaden you to the bone.

Body bags are a familiar sight around the Monroe estate, laid in rows like the turn and river.

This occasion for Worick is a hardly a new experience, its another mass bloodbath he's seen in the short span of his young adult life, but that hardly stops the haunting from the faces of the deceased.

He'll recall the last conversation he had with them, all insignificant details- like they don't button their cuffs and laugh lines on their face, and just as easily- just as unexpectedly, they are dead and Worick is left with their final words out of blood bubbling lungs and pain contorted countenance playing on loop in his skull.

And it seems they always pelted by the clouds with sorrow on these days, and Monroe's men- they willingly stand in it with devotion to their peers. They're family.

The plastic repels the rain, making a noise so comforting to Worick that he almost forgets the dead underneath.

Almost.

White orchids shed petals in their wake.

 

Relieved of his duties, Worick slips into the mansion, soaked like a harlot to the skin and turning his clothes inflexible and clingy. Water squelches in his mud shod shoes that were so pristine earlier as he walks.

A little trail of rain cast off his steps marks his path into the gloom hallway.

Among the multitude of rooms and offices, there are quarters for guards and members of the 'Monroe family' to rest between shifts or gamble. There are a few extra suits in the wardrobe that might fit Worick that sadly the dead men won't be needing.

The doorway is yawning and facing the west window.

There is an eerie cast of grey light -an artists light, Worick would say- that shows the true hues of color without conflict from the sun's rays or artificial light.

Nicolas is there, laying sideways on a empty cot, his limp legs hanging over and boot heels twisted in like some drunkard in stilettos. Worick knows he's not asleep, but he's definitely not awake either.

Worick crosses in front of the window, aware Nic will see the contrast behind his eyelids.

So when he looks at him again, Nic has one eye open a sliver. It seems even that is a difficult task, without the medical tape tugging at the skin under his eye.

He offers to move no other part of his body.

"How do you feel?" Worick asks, inverting his soaked coat to free it from the broad of his shoulders.

If Worick's wet and miserable, Nic has it significantly worse.

Nicolas is still looking at him, dazed, his gaze rolls up to the ceiling and that's his autobiography. He hasn't changed clothes either. His damp jacket half removed and stained in blood.

"Tell you what," Worick continues to no one in particular. "I'm fucking freezing."

He blindly rummages through the series of coats in the wardrobe, and not surprisingly produces a silver flask from a pocket.

"Ah~ Lucky..." He breathes, uncapping it and taking a long drink, like its a remedy of some sort.

Nicolas observes from his angle on the cot, and he thinks at a pace that's one-third his usual processing capabilities, that Worick looks like his father, with his head tipped back and fingers wrapped around alcohol.

But that is something Worick will never hear from his hands.

Worick's head is full of static, eardrums aching from the cold with a pressure like altitude elevation. Its even hurts to talk because his jaw has been clenched for so long.

It's funny, he cannot tell whether its the honest cold, or the feedback from this hellish day he's endured numbing his brain.

His empty socket manufactures a pain buried deep inside the remains of his nerve.

The floor cannot steal away any warmth from his bare feet.

He begins to unbutton his dress shirt, eye flitting to Nic briefly and the back again for longer.

Worick sighs, the floor sticking to his skin.

His shadow is grainy in the minimal light, but still casts over Nicolas, who's stare peeks out under heavy lids.

Its been overcast for days. Even Nicolas looks pale wearing it on his skin, or maybe it's the downers painting his face.

Oxidized copper and mauve pigment smeared around his eyes, his skin holding sweat to his forehead. His tags and chain twisting around his neck.

Guilt bites at his insides.

Worick is still young and affected. Its not just witnessing brutality, oh he's seen that- experienced it as more than a testimony. 

He's had the blood gumming on his hands, stinging in his eye- but this is a sorrow conjoined with living in this terrible world. Since he was conceived, and Worick has yet to learn how to amputate it.

He gazes down at Nicolas, sprawled out and busted, with _that look_ in his eyes.

Worick wonders if he should gouge out his other, so he won't have to see Nicolas wear it, beneath those bruises and bandages practically holding his face together.

Against his own pride, his good eye swells with salt and he weeps for everyone and simultaneously for no one.

Though it doesn't really matter if he's heard, Worick is still silent, sniffling through the cotton in his sinuses, filling his eye thick and blurry.

Nicolas watches this, his expression a flat line on a heart monitor. He's not seen Worick cry in a long lapse of time.

He doesn't question why he cries, there are too many variables.

But, **if** Nicolas was the reason Worick kept living in a world like this, a world of biblical sin and death by fire, then he thinks that logic is stupidly flawed.

 

Stupidly flawed logic that has everything to do with him.

Still, to live for such futility, desperately holding onto things that are clearly out of his control...

Nic imagines pills falling from Worick's eye. If the downers weren't pulling on his limbs like millstones shackles, he would reach out.

It is a hard cry, but its brief.

 

And in next second Worick is composed, rolling up his sleeves.

He none to gently heaves Nicolas forward by the collar, stripping off the ruined jacket. Rain drips onto Nic's cheek from the wet strands of Worick's hair dangling above his face.

"You're a fucking mess, you know?" He huffs, unbuttoning his shirt and working the damp fabric off his shoulders. Nicolas feels his breath on his neck, its sour like antiseptics.

Worick tosses the ruined clothes aside as Nicolas manages to stay sitting, only by counterbalance, hunched forward and swaying.

There are a few minor lacerations on Nic's shoulder, angry red shrieks and clotted blood. Their origins unknown, it could've been Nicolas himself by accident, or friendly fire.

Worick couldn't keep up with Nic on a bad day- much less when he overdoses.

He was only present because he held contract, its not like he was any good with a gun yet with his handicap.

He was more of a liability than he was necessary.

Worick pushes his hair behind his ears, but his bangs fold right back into his face. Its grown out quite a bit, but its currently too short to tie up.

He exhales, drumming the silver flask with his fingers and takes a another mouthful.

Worick's gaze tracks Nics' scar tissue like art leads the eye on a canvas. He remembers the majority of those scars. Those sacrifices of flesh for a Rank.

For Monroe.

A twilight's life in exchange for humans.

A twilight's hands smearing human greymatter like finger paint.

The middle ground is brittle and eroding. Occasionally Worick looses his footing.

Nicolas's muscles tremble. Worick drops to his knees and lets Nic brace against him while he pours the alcohol over his wounds. The proof was high enough to disinfect.

Better safe than sorry. He doubts they will be seeing Dr. Theo in the immediate future and Worick would rather waste stolen liquor than have Nicolas fight infection.

His worth is weighed in condition, like drafting animals and prize fighters.

Nicolas must hold his worth to Monroe, or they will be culled.

Today was not faultless day for Nicolas, and that is a stain on Worick's esteem. That makes it his responsibility that Nic's in the position that he's in currently, doubled over and lethargic.

Shot with downers because Worick was too many paces behind. Again.

Monroe's men shot him because they fear Nicolas.

Worick only fears recollection.

What he would give to return to oblivion, to have a spike drove hard into his medial temporal and sit by the window like a potted plant.

At some point in his wretched life, Worick fucked up. He spoke when his mouth should've been sewn shut.

Eyes wide with tears.

Nics' eyes wide with _his_ will.

 _Worick's_ own will and _his_ own mistake.

There was no one else to condemn.

He subconsciously grips Nicolas's wounded shoulder, who flinches and cuts his eyes at Worick pointedly.

"Sorry," Worick chokes through the spit and turn of stomach. "I forgot about the downers' effects."

Of course he didn't forget. No matter how bad he wants to.

Nicolas holds his gaze to Worick, who squirms under it. He signs with shaky hands:

**_'LIAR'_ **

He sits back on his heels to look Nicolas straight in the face.

At first, Worick looks utterly nonplussed but then that shell is discarded and what's chambered is a little closer to home.

"What the fuck ever, its your fault for getting downed, running off wild without me..." He huffs, adding for good measure, "You dummy."

Nicolas realized then that Worick isn't going to explain himself away, or give petty answers as to why he's lying.

Why he chooses to be vulnerable. Why he choose to live.

Why he lives alongside Nicolas.

But that's okay. Its more normal this way, and there is comfort in the familiarity of naivety.

When Worick is finished wiping the excess around the wounds clean, Nic allows himself to fall back onto the cot and his muscles are immediately relieved of strain.

Worick hoists Nic's legs over a bit so that he's laying supine and works off his boots with no withheld roughness.

He haphazardly tosses the other boot onto the floor and is left with Nic's foot in his hands. Its a lot less gross then Worick would imagine. The boots themselves were new, and it stunk like industrial fabric dye and tanned leather.

He is quiet for a indeterminate stretch of time, holding Nic's foot firmly like a stress toy and he thinks for a fleeting moment that their shoe sizes might be the same now.

"You're going to have to apologize to Monroe." Worick glances down at Nicolas.

His eyes are closed and his face listless.

"Hey!" Worick grips his ankle and jerks his leg. "Focus, this is important!"

Nicolas's raises his eyebrows but doesn't oblige him. Pursing his lips, Worick pinches the arch of his foot through the sock but that yields nothing but a dull groan.

Nic's eyes finally crack open when Worick drops the dead weight of his leg onto the cot.

"You'll have to apologize to Monroe." Worick breaths again, moving to sit by Nic's side.

"What are you going to say?"

Nicolas gives him a droll stare.

"I get it. You're tired, but this is your job on the line here. You may even be summoned this evening."

Nico glances up at the ceiling for a second, rolling his tongue around his his mouth.

It wasn't his fault good men died, but a Twilight is more than always held accountable.

" 'm sAhrree... M'nrOe-sanN."

Rough, uncouth, but still words.

Worick bites his lip and tilts his head. "That... could work,"

He doesn't want to say _'its not good enough'_ considering getting words from Nicolas is like bleeding a stone.

Worick stares out the window textured with rain. He's not inebriated, but still not quite sober. Nicolas's respiration is steady and even.

 

"Here," Worick lifts one of Nic's slender arms up and leans in so his cold fingers mold to his throat.

"Feel this..." And Worick pronounces the words slow and deep while Nic studies intently with his sharp eyes and sensitive touch.

"Try it?" He asks, his palms a little hot on Nic's wrist.

Nicolas moves his free hand to touch his own throat and tries to replicate the same reverberations.

Whereas Worick's brain is a filing cabinet, Nicolas has the ability to adapt and learn at a frightening pace, without much mental frustration.

Worick repeats the phrase and Nicolas parrots it back, his callous fingers pressing into the flesh of Worick's throat on either side of his adam's apple, memorizing the pull of tendons and flex of muscle.

Its was admittedly surreal, to have Nic's hand on him, wrapped around the greater part of his throat. It would only take a second and Nicolas could crush his windpipe, if he so desired.

Even in his semi-sedated state.

Though morbid in nature, the thought brings a wry smirk to Worick's face. A bit of anxiousness causes his heart to skip a beat, and its uncomfortable like blood moving backwards in his veins, but he swallows it down.

He feels fingers twitch over his carotid artery. Worick's eye flickers to Nicolas'.

"I'm sorRY, WallAcce." He offers into the bleakness of the atmosphere, and its said low and surprising precise. Bandages and adhesive tape tugging at the bridge of his nose as he speaks.

And the sadness lurking in his soul must have seized Worick's countenance, because Nicolas's hand looses from its hold.

 _Apologizing for what?_ Worick thinks, releasing Nic's wrist.

It was the most aimless, legitimate lie he'd heard out of Nicolas's mouth.

Unless it wasn't. Unless there was context, and it was genuine.

 _Honestly sorry for something that wasn't ever his fault._ Even with the ambiguity aside, Worick can't recall a point in their history that Nicolas should render an apology.

Every neuron in his brain was numbed, the inclination to cry again was swallowed down, and a bizarre sense of relief spread into his veins like morphine. Worick wants to reply, but his thoughts have transformed into a deck of cards that have been scattered by the wind. His gasps for breath, like the final reflexes of a dying animal.

Nicolas's pupils are dilated, eyes set into mauve stains- wine spilled across tablecloth. His fingers hook into Worick's collarbone, that tender pressure point that could be punctured like a batter head.

"N-no, I'm the one who's sorry." Worick stutters, leaning onto his arms, closer so that Nicolas can read him in the waning light.

"Its all my-"

Its hard to talk, when a brusque chilled hand crawls up the length of his neck, weaving lazily into his hair. Worick subdues something that feels like panic buried in his gut, a hot blade and it turns his skin into paper máché and blood into confetti. He regulates his breathing consciously.

"...M-my fault."

Its difficult to tell if Worick's body is hot or cold or maybe neither. Because at the moment, he questions the stability of his own DNA molecules. Maybe he doesn't exist.

Nicolas's hand rests there on his nape, digits only moving to gently combing through the shorter locks of his hair, untangling the neglected pieces. And Worick doesn't know anything beyond the face below him, placid eyes narrowed to slits and hollowed out by the dimness.

That is his commitment. His contract, and he will uphold it.

When Nicolas lowers his arm, too fatigued to hold it up any longer, Worick follows.

His bangs brush across the gauze and bandages stuck to Nics' face, slipping over his skin while Worick covers him easily with a kiss.

 

Its a melancholy kiss, like a funeral walk, slow and grieving.

Light rain on the window becomes pointillism on the glass, droplets sliding down, bending and mixing together.

Nicolas had not the time to be overwhelmed by such a small thing, in fact, it cleaves through the confinement of his ribs and feeds him oxygen. Abating the sensation of a waterfall crushing his nerves from the downers. Lungs spread bloody on his back.

Nicolas mentally affirms, tilting his head back under the crane of the others' neck, that Worick is exactly as he appears.

Educated in practice, weak in confrontation. Oh, how he tries to hold himself together but the stitches pull through his flesh like saturated paper.

Peel away all of that beguilement off him and Worick is tender and malleable to his surroundings like plastic. He melts.

Especially his lips, slick and soft, undiluted bleach on skin. Contact with his mouth stings, caustic from distillation.

The taste of alcohol in Worick's saliva burns sweet like anti-freeze in his throat, and its good, because Nic wasn't ever partial to drinking, but now he knows why people make faces when they drown themselves.

Maybe Nicolas wouldn't mind drowning.

If it was consistently like this.

His fingers curl lax around Worick's grounded wrist, his uniform pulse reminds him of cards being dealt clockwise, rhythmically, face down. Check? Check.

This is the antidote and the illness, the tablets he might masticate one day are swallowed the next, and its not something that can be bought back with currency or coaxed from his beneath his tongue.

It's absolute mourning that has bore down upon him, pressing a white-hot iron to his neck and dragging over the edges of his teeth.

Worick shifts, breaking the seal. A lock of hair momentarily gets snagged on a twist of medical tape.

A draft of humid exhale that feels like syrup across the wet parts of his lips.

Nicolas opens his eyes he didn't recall closing.

Woricks' moved to the edge of the cot, hunched over with a cigarette. He's looking though the window at the smother of clouds dominating the sun, pressing the heel of his palm into his eye socket.

The glow of the cherry waxes and wanes. Smoke pours out of Worick's mouth and nose in great rolling, liquid-like waves carried into the air with no destination.

Nicolas must have made a small noise, because Worick drops a hand away from his eye patch and swivels around.

"What?" He asks innocently at the daggers honed on him.

"I thought you fell asleep." Fickle plumes of smoke escape with his words.

' ** _LIAR'_** Nic signs limp-wristed.

Worick scoffs, turning to look back out the window again. He chews at the inside of his lip curtly.

"Yeah. I guess you're right."

The cigarette doesn't maim the taste of blood and boiled roses.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I did a small bit of editing to help some things make sense. Probably didn't help though, writing isn't my strong point. If you stuck it out, I'm in your debt ~~


End file.
